Forms and Field - Custom Field configure

[jgalvez]

Hello There,

I would like to know if it's possible to make the custom field below appear only for expense types under 2 out of the 3 policies in our company. Can its accessibility be restricted to specific policies? Currently, we have 3 policy groups that share expense types, and this custom field is visible across all policy groups. Is there an efficient way to configure this?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Joseph

[Andras]

Hi @jgalvez 

Standard Edition:

To add a new Custom Field, please follow the steps below. Please note that you will need to have the "Can Administer" permission to access the Custom Fields page.

1. Go to Home > Administration - Expense & Invoice Settings
2. Select Expense, Invoice or Request underneath Product
3. Under the "Capturing Spend" heading, click on Custom Fields
4. Select the Add a Custom Field button
5. Type the name of custom field under the "Field Name"
6. Select the type of field you want to add: List | Multi-Level List | Free-form Text | Checkbox
7. Enter the Field Name
8. Click the Add button
9. Click the Done Button

If the New Custom Field Name is added and it is not showing up to the following List | Multi-Level List | Free-form Text | Checkbox, the Administrator will need to sign out and sign in to Concur to refresh and reflect the New Added Custom Field Name. 

Professional Edition:

To add a new Custom Field, please follow the steps below. Please note that you will need to have the "Expense or Invoice Configuration Administrator (Unrestricted)" permission to access the Custom Fields page.

1. Go to Administration > Expense or Invoice or Request
2. Search and select Forms and Fields
3. Select Form Type 
4. Select Field from Field Name column
5. Select Modify Field
6. Select the type of field you want to add: Text | Amount | Boolean | Date | Integer | List | Connected List | Numeric
7. Select the access right for each role to determine if the field will be hidden, read-only or modifiable
8. Click Save
9. Select Form Fields
10. Select Form from Form Field Name column
11. Select Add Fields
12. Choose Field from Field Name column
13. Select Add Field

If you do not have the Expense Configuration Administrator (Unrestricted) role then you will need to open a case with Support and provide the information of the field you need to modify. 

[ethanmsb]

Hello Andras, 

Is there a way to create and update these custom field options via the Expense API?

If not, what would be the best way to maintain custom fields that may be changing (daily) in our external ERP?

Background: We want to load "Projects" from our external ERP into SAP Concur Expense as a dropdown on a custom field so that our users can select which Project an expense should be allocated to without the need for manual entry.

For reference, I made a post for this that goes into more detail: Creating custom UD Expense Form Fields via SAP Con... - SAP Concur Community

[KevinD]

@ethanmsb custom fields cannot be created via an API. They must be configured directly in SAP Concur, but then can be referenced via API. 

[ethanmsb]

Custom fields cannot be created via the API - got it, and thank you for the quick response!

However, can the dropdown options/values of those custom fields be populated via the API after the custom fields are created from the SAP Concur App, or must the dropdown options/values be added either manually or via the upload List (e.g. the List Template provided by Concur)?

It would be nice if I can create a cronjob to sync the values of our custom fields' dropdown with our ERP data instead uploading a new List each time our ERP data changes.

Context: We are creating new "Projects" in our ERP often (daily or weekly), and we want our SAP Concur Expense App users to be able to select a "Project" from the custom field dropdown, but without a sync (or regularly uploading the list), the user may not see the "Project" in the dropdown when attempting to create an expense.

[KevinD]

@ethanmsb APIs are not my area of expertise, but my guess is if you cannot create custom fields using APIs, you cannot use APIs to populate those lists. However, don't quote me on that as I'm just guessing. I would use the import option to populate the lists. I do know that other customers have worked with SAP Concur to create a job within the system that would run each day to populate their list items. I don't know exactly how it is done, but if you speak with your assigned Customer Success Partner, they should be able to either provide details or get you in touch with someone who can.

[KevinD]

@ethanmsb so a colleague of mine found the following resources that might help you. According to his understanding, APIs can be used to maintain values in lists. 

Here are the links: 

https://developer.concur.com/api-reference/common/lists/v4.list.html

https://developer.concur.com/api-reference/common/list-item/v4.list-item.html

https://developer.concur.com/api-reference/common/list-item/v4.list-item-bulk.html

[cbernard]

HI @ethanmsb - we have done this in our system.   High level, we have 2 custom fields that are assigned to a Custom List which allows us to select a 'department' in custom1 and then based on that value, Custom2 displays a list of projects that are valid for the department selected in Custom1.

Then on a daily basis, we extract a CSV wth 2 columns (Dept & Project) sorted by Dept.   We have a script (Power Automate) that processes this file.   One each change in DEPT in the CSV, we delete ALL the projects that are Level 2 under that DEPT (by deleting the DEPT Record).   Then we loop through file and add all the Dept/Projects until the DEPT changes and we start again.   By default, we also add a "Not Project Related" for expenses that might be administrative or something like that - that is a personal preference and not needed to make this work.

By doing this, only the active projects are available in the lists.

If you just have a list of projects and not tied to department,  you would simply delete the list items and recreate all new from your input file. 

It's not terrible hard to script the load - hardest learning for me was the 2 level refresh.

[PoojaKumatkar]

Hi @ethanmsb ,

I have added detailed response in below post, please refer to it.

Creating custom UD Expense Form Fields via SAP Con... - SAP Concur Community

[KevinD]

@jgalvez in addition to what @Andras provided, you might need to create new expense types for those two policies where you want this field to be visible. In addition to this, you would need to have those expense types use their own forms. That way you can make this field visible on the forms these expense types use. Then you could activate these expense types for the two policies.

As already mentioned, you need to have unrestricted access to do this because forms and fields and policies require it.

It all boils down to whether you have unrestricted access or not. If you do not, then you would need to submit this request to Concur Support.

[jgalvez]

Thanks for the feedback.

Actually I re-purposed the custom field highlighted below that is visible in all of our expense types and 3 policy groups and I wanted to see if there was an easier way to remove its visibility from a specific policy. We are trying to avoid in creating a brand custom field from scratch to add.

Regards,

Joseph